Scavenger Hunt 03-Software in Flux PDF

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Scavenger Hunt – Week 03 –Software in Flux

Unit 1: Introduction 

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For each of these three terms, be able to explain its definition and how it is relevant to the software industry: o marginal costs  how much does it cost to make an additional unit relative to the company’s total cost?  Traditions: can be expensive. Software- marginal costs are close to nothing. ZERO MARGINAL COSTS.. o network effects  the value of a product or service inc as num of users grow  some companies don’t have network effects  social media is an example of a company that uses network effects. o switching costs  the total cost incurred to switch to a more beneficial software (training data transfer, etc.)  high switching costs mean that customers are not likely to leave you even if the price goes up die to the overall increased value of product/service. Describe these aspects of the traditional software industry: proprietary software, enterprise data centers o Commercial software  Vendor develops, maintains  Proprietary – black box (can’t see exactly how the software is ran) o Enterprise data center  Expensive buildings/rooms  Lots of computers, storage devices, AC, power  Expensive to maintain What are some key potential “treasure” outcomes of the following disruptions to the software industry? o Flux = disruption = change o open source  shared development effort of software from people all over the place. Eliminates “ black box” o cloud  renting someone else’s data centers for your computing needs. Creates economies of scale, agility, etc. o virtualization  the ability for one computer to perform multiple jobs simultaneously

Unit 2: Open Source 

Be able to explain the characteristics of Open Source Software (OSS) o cost – is it truly “free”? how is it different from traditional commercial model?  No license fee, doesn’t mean it is free  Remember TCO (puppy v beer)  Reduced costs of entry for smaller companies o access to source code – what are the implications / benefits of having the code?  Programming language code that makes the application work.  Ability to Fix bugs yourself, Modify behavior, and Add features  Not able with commercial products

Requires:  Free redistribution, has to be in good shape  Allow modifications, must be technology neutral o community – what does the community do? who are they?  Group of developers, advance that package, create new software  Support resource  Contribute your ideas o development model  commercial software  vendor develops, maintains  proprietary – black box  open source  community develops, maintain  open to anyone , modify o distribution  download  source code  compiled The lecture provided a set of sample OSS solutions – be familiar with these names and how they’re used o Firefox o Open OCce, o Linux (OS) o Apache (world’s leading webserver) o MySQL (database server) LAMP stack – What is it? What are its components? How is it used? o Linux (OS) o Apache (webserver) o MySQL (database server) o Programming language (PHP) o Together you have an engine/ platform that you can create powerful web applications and the platform that you build these applications is all open soure, zero licensing fee, etc. Understand the economics of OSS – where does the money come from? o Revenue potential  Commercial support  Maybe requirement for adoption (24/7 help desk)  Mission critical – can’t wait for community  Safety blanket people new to open source aren’t familiar to “community”  Consulting services  Design  Integration  Ex: consulting is the biggest part of IBM’s modern day business and is part of dell’s  Hardware  No license fees = more money for hardware  IBM consulting services inc their hardware sales (same w dell)  Every major hardware manufacturer is more than happy to dell you their product preloaded w Linux, for example. Revenue for potential for open source software. 

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“Democratization of IT” – What is meant by this? How does OSS encourage it? Who benefits? o Looking at Open Source from consumer side o Economic growth and development o levels the playing field for consumers due to decreased costs, customization of software o levels playing field for small businesses too, decreased costs diminish the typical barriers of entry o little guys have access to the technology the big guys use.

Unit 3: The Cloud 

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What is meant by “the cloud”? o Unseen computer services that is extremely efficient and more secure than traditional computing. o Consumer cloud computing  Free/low cost  Easy  User friendly  Consumerization (bringing computer grade apps into the enterprise for enterprise purposes. o Rogue apps  When an employee uses a personal cloud-based app at work without telling anybody. Exposes confidential business info, greatly increases chances of getting hacked. Enterprise Cloud Computing – What are each of the following? How are they used? o SaaS software as a service, office 365, google apps, salesforce  Benefits:  Don’t buy hardware  Don’t install software  Don’t have to patch/upgrade  Rapid deployment  Scalable  Operating expense versus more complicated calculations o PaaS platform as a service, easier way to create your own software. Ex: windows azure, amazon web services  Benefits:  Don’t buy hardware  Don’t build an expensive data center  install your software on their servers  7 X 24 support for the platform  scalable (probably)  operating expense o DaaS desktop as a service, pay per desktop per month to have data stored in the cloud. (amazon web services, dell, citrix)  Benefits:  Rapid deployment o Gold image – your technician design a gold image computer based on your company’s needs o Publish apps- tools provided to which you can publish news apps to your company’s computers based on needs

Rapidly scale up/ down Decreased support costs (gold image simplifies potential support as well as some provided by respective vendor)  Any user device BYOD – emplyees can connect to company’s desktop in cloud and use it as a service system  No data on user devices – all data is in the cloud, security isn’t an issue  Operating expense Federated Authentication o What is it? Why is it important to enterprise customers?  Allows users of a respected enterise to use a single login for multiple different cloud services of that enterprise. Gatorlink, shibboleth. Important bc it minimizes user support, allows for single sign-on, more secure for enterprise and esier for users in terms of daily functionality o Name the three federated authentication technologies discussed in lecture  Shibboleth  SAML  OAUTH o What is SSO?  Simple sign on  Allows users of a respective enterprise to use a single login for all of their cloud based-services What factors lead to cloud computing being more energy efficient and environmentally friendly? o Greater energy efficiency  Dynamic provisioning  Multi-tenancy  Higher server utilization  Data center efficiency  Corp examples  Salesforce data cloud is more efficient  VMWare: 1 server=1 car What is a “Cloud-First Strategy”? o When a new app is developed the first question is “where can we put this on the cloud” Be able to explain the risks of cloud computing o vendor stability  any software system (especially w cloud) need to worry about the vendor’s financial health. Will they still be in business next year? If a software company goes bankrupt and you’ve installed their software on your PCs or servers you’re ok bc you can keep using for a while. If a cloud provider goes bankrupt, then their service goes online, you’ve got nothing. You prob cant even get your data off their servers. o security risks – regulatory compliance  it can be trickier w cloud services since you have no direct control over their operating procedures and data security. o Consumerization  Potential for enterprise info to be stored into an employees personal cloud. Explain measures that cloud customers can take to minimize risk, including… o audits – including AICPA SOC 2  American instituite of CPA’s – verified and trusted external auditing organization that can financially verify a potential cloud service vendor.  

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SOC 2 the AICIPA’s doc the reports on a service org control over the security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, privacy of your data. data location  company may have certain req to where their data can and can’t be located, who can accress, etc. what is meant by “look behind the curtain” when discussing cloud solutions?  Where a vendor is getting their services from befrore deciding to use them. Ex: you need data in US, but your provider has outsourced their cloud storage provider from another country. You must look “behign the curtain” and notify vendor of any requirements in advance, audit as time goes on. disaster recovery  vendors create a disaster of data  are they’re enough sites?  How long to replicate data to DR site?  Do they validate replicated data? exit strategy  what are the erms of your cloud service vendor’s contract that affect your ability to get out  who can terminate the contract? What reasons are necessary? Advanced notif req?  penalty fees?  Extrication of data o Make sure you can retrieve data o What format data is going to be when you retrieve o Are u sure that vendor is going to destroy all copies of your data 

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Unit 4: Virtualization 

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What is virtualization? o Way to take advantage of underutilized resources in hardware to inc the overall value for out money. o Uses abstraction What is meant by “abstraction” of resources? o Extracting info from computer in order to multiply its usage through virtualization. Computer resources  Cpu  Memory  Storage  NIC (network card) How does virtualization solve the problem of underutilized hardware? o Runs multiple “virtual computers: on a single physical host computer system. o Reasons why this better utilizes hardware  Virtual machines share resources of a physical machine  Virtualized hardware uses generic drive compatible w multiple types of physical hardware. This allows easy migration to different physical hosts, creating rapid deployment of virtual machines  Virtual machines run on one server, vs 1 server per physical machine *saving electricity and space  Both: physical and virtual machines require individual OS licenses per machine What is workstation virtualization? How can it be used in business?

Running multiple OS on a single physical host machine  Benefits:  Tech can extend work capabilities *not the same as dual boot  Virtual machine portability – shut down VM on one physical host and copy/send it to another machine on a diff continent  Security: o Test SW in VM without risking host integrity o Snapshots – restore VM to previous status put computer back to time of snapshot o Run everything in VM on PM What is server virtualization? o Running multiple virtual servers on host physical server o Explain how server virtualization reduces a company’s IT costs  Consolidation  Servers are grossly underutilized, possible to run 20+ virtual servers per physical srver. Allowing reduced hardware costs and ability to pool resources  server rooms / datacenters  server running 20 jobs fewer servers and excess capacity, dec heat emmisions lowereing AC costs o How does virtualization impact server deployment and enterprise agility?  Create a virtual server Templeton to play as many as you need from template. Reduce cost given you faster turnabouts and minimize errors. Snapshots are also possible on virtual servers aids in patching and back ups o How can virtualization improve enterprise reliability and disaster recovery?  Reliability/ redundancy  Live migration allows you to move a VM from one host to another in an instant this could come in handy if you need to work on one hose but don’t want to sacrifice the usage of the respective VM  Failover systems if a host dies in the middle of its life you can reduce the VM’s that were running on it to other hosts  Testing you can build a virtual test network at a very low cost  Disaster recovery if the main site goes down you can send back up information to a recovery site even if it’s using different hardware o What top three server virtualization systems were discussed in lecture? Which is OSS?  VMWare  Microsoft Hyper-v  Xen-opensource o

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